


Cartography Under Siege

by nsmorig



Series: Cartography In Extremis [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Aumaua Paladin Watcher, Cartography, Epistolary, Essentially a novelisation of canon, Gen, John Donne as a method of communication, The Kind Wayfarers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsmorig/pseuds/nsmorig
Summary: The collected correspondences and memoirs of Eso Caed Nua, published by the Kind Wayfarers as a reference for travellers, historians and other interested parties.My dearest mother;--I am afraid my settlement in Gilded Vale has not had the auspicious beginning that we hoped for.





	1. 1.1

 

The collected correspondences and memoirs of Esoh Caed Nua, published by the Kind Wayfarers as a reference for travellers, historians and other interested parties

 

Volume I

 

Containing the historical appendixes, epigraphs and postscript added before initial publication by Aloth Corfiser and Kana Rua and notes on the condition of the manuscript and transcription

  
  


Folio I

‘Strange Wonders’

 

_A battered leather-bound journal, Folio I is the shortest and least well-preserved of the Caed Nua manuscripts. The majority of the book is filled with illegible or irrelevant notes from an unidentifiable adventurer, made unreadable by water-damage or blood-stains. Esoh’s manuscript begins on the seventy-fifth page, and the folio is named for a scrap of poem added by Esoh to the margins, probably considerably after the events described:_

 

 

 

 

 

 

> And find
> 
> What wind
> 
> Serves to advance an honest mind--
> 
>  
> 
> If thou be’st born to strange sights,
> 
> Things invisible to see,
> 
> Ride ten thousand days and nights
> 
> Till Age shall snow white hairs on thee;
> 
> Thou, when thou return’st, shall tell me
> 
> All strange wonders that befell thee
> 
> And swear--

 

_The ink here blots, and the poem is not continued. See ‘Songs of the Drywood’ for an analysis of whether this poem is complete, and whether it was authored by Esoh._

 

_The seventy-fifth page begins in a round italic hand, identifiable as Aedyran penmanship:_

 

I can't believe my luck. A few rounds of dice, and I've got my hands on a genuine Engwithan artifact. Fellow who had it said it was a pretty nothing, as far as he's concerned - he's not willing to go digging in some ruins. But if he's right about this gem leading to a hidden treasure, then that's worth sneaking past a few painted elves.

 

I'll head to Cilant Lîs in the morning. Then it's just a matter of finding this relief he was talking about.

 

_Here this hand finishes, and an inch down the page a new hand starts, in distinctive Valian cursive. Though Folios I and II are written as letters to Esoh’s mother, by Corfiser’s account they were never sent in that form, as the manuscript grew too long and the journal was too fragile for the journey; they were heavily edited down into the Letters Across The Water,  which until the discovery of Folio I were the only extant accounts of an induced Awakening._

 

My dearest mother;--

 

I am afraid my arrival in Gilded Vale has not had the auspicious beginning that we hoped for.

 

I have spend the last week as part of a caravan, as recommended by my brothers in the Wayfarer suppers in New Heomar; they were wise to say such, for the path has been treacherous. Beautiful regardless, of course, from what little I remember of it.

 

I spent most of my time walking ahead of the caravan, clearing the path and my head. If one walks far enough, one forgets that there is a caravan at all, and upon reaching the peak of a hill or cliff the sky is so bright and clear and close I could swear I was back home, with the water mirror-smooth and throwing the sky back at me, though of course there is no ocean at my feet. And then there is the descent; returning from the peaks back to the forest floor, the cold winds fading, the black silhouettes of the trees marching up from the horizon. You can smell the cut-off between the sky and the forest; the faint smell of home, blown on the driving inland currents, is taken and consumed by the smell of life, rich dark earth and falls of rotting leaves.

 

Mother--

 

You did not warn me about forests. I was not prepared.

 

The trees here are different. They do not narrow politely upwards, they do not share space; it appears that a Drywood tree is like a gas, and will expand to fill available space with dark spines and trunks that twine and branch like limbs.

 

You may wonder why I speak of ‘what little I can remember;’ on my third day with the caravan I fell sick. Some stomach-sickness assaulted me, likely from poorly-cured meat; Odema, the leader of the caravan, assured me that it is fairly common, on the pass. None-the-less, I was in delirium for days, caught between a terrible aching lethargy and my quickening heartbeat, hanging somewhere between the forest and the sky, out of my mind.

 

They have bees, here, as they do everywhere, but they seem a whole different species; they glow in the twilight like luminescent plankton, hives shining like paper lanterns on the trees, humming with activity. The days of my illness were unremarkable, but the nights-- the caravans continued as I slid in and out of awareness, and the hive-lanterns - planted by the path by rangers to light the way - slid across my vision like something incomprehensible, blue and flickering.

 

I remember from a small pocket of lucidity that the healer they had employed was baffled as to how I could have caught it, apparently under the belief that an Aumaua of my size ought to be invulnerable. Calisca assures me it is terrible bad luck to brawl with healers, even ones who would restrict treatment based on how far they think a patient ought to be able to ‘put up with it.’

 

Calisca is a fearsome woman, the guide employed by the caravan. She and I walked together quite a bit before my illness. She keeps to herself, which I can respect, but when she finds her way to opening her mouth she is wickedly, sardonically funny. It is gratifying to hear that the Wayfarers are respected here; I suspect that the only reason that she is so kind to me is because we have made great strides in the area. It is not a bad thing, to have a reputation wherever you go, even if it sometimes manifests as ‘sweet but a bit dim,’ which I am afraid is what Calisca thinks of me. She visited during my convalescence, if for minutes at a time. She is a sweet girl, despite the fearsomeness, though I suspect she would protest it if I told her such, so I shall write it in whispers.

 

I began to recover as we made the descent back to the plains, and by the time we made camp on the seventh day I was at least upright.

 

Setting up camp for the night generally requires every available hand, and so when Odema received reports that the area grew wild springberries - a reported remedy for stomach sickness - Calisca and I were asked to find some ourselves. Sparfel, a very unpleasant man and the resident hunter, was sent off to filter some water from the stream for me; Calisca rolled her eyes, and I think she did not believe that he would.

 

We set off in the purple dusk, I perhaps leaning more heavily on my greatstaff than I would like to admit. The place where we made camp was startling from a distance; the ruins of some ancient Engwithan palace, nestled in the foothills of the mountains, the rock curving like a bay around crumbling arches and fallen pillars. Adra, the deep green-blue of a lagoon at night, breaks through the earth in spires, yet more pillars of a palace not yet built.

 

The ruins, something old and lost in the shelter of something older still, are eerie in the pale grey sunset. Perhaps it’s the local mythology; Engwithan ruins are fiercely protected by the men of Eir Glanfath, rightly so for people will desecrate anything for a profit. Still, there is something about their dedication that makes one wonder if there is not something more to these ruins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poem by john donne, although it fits so perfectly its hard to believe it wasn't specifically written about PoE.
> 
> i'm going Full Jirt, folks. poetry. attotated marginalia. made-up editors notes. brace yourself.


	2. 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the bîaŵac + the first night in Cilant Lis

Of course, the ruins were hiding rather more mundane things than what my mind conjured, and perhaps the least of these was the wolf we found.

We followed the river upstream, ducking back into the forest when the bank became too unstable to continue. The light here was dim and fading the further we got from the bonfire of the camp, and Calisca found a viciously barbed torch to light. It burned with a guttering yellow flame, throwing tarred soot into the air, and cast a light that moved like it was alive.

A wolf, in that sort of light, looks like some form of demon, a sea-serpent coming through the kelp. It stood between us and the springberries, so even if Calisca had had a modicum of stealth, and it hadn’t seen us by the torch-light, we would have had to fight it. A rush of adrenaline, hard hits and Calisca’s battle-axe, and soon it was over.

You have taught me well, mother, but I am still unaccustomed to the sort of fight where I cannot send an enemy flying overboard. Regardless of its quick death, I did not want to spend my evening watching the poor hound bleed out onto the earth as I pick berries. Rio is an excellent and noble weapon, but one cannot kill cleanly with a greatstaff. Please tell father he ought to have made me a pike.

(I jest, father. I adore Rio, as you very well know. I will go back and get him, once I can figure a way over the ruins. He will not rest among corpses.)

The night was not content with this misfortune.

The state of things devolved from there.

We walked back to camp, jittery with adrenaline; I think it made Calisca want to talk, because I learned more about her in that half-hour than in the week I’ve known her. She seeks her sister in Gilded Vale; it will be nice to see her a little happier, when we get there, as we have agreed to travel together until I reach Caed Nua-- she knows the way, she says.

I think that I offended her. I don’t know quite what I said. She asked about growing up in Deadfire; I spoke of you and father, growing up on the Marianna, going out on raiding parties and battling winding serpents. I noticed - mid story, hands in the air and bouncing - how she seemed spooked, and when I asked after her she brushed me off. I was trying to-- to lighten the air, after Odema’s dire warnings and the wolf, but it only made it worse.

We reached camp in an odd state of tension. When I settled by the fire, she carefully sat as far away from me as possible. The whole thing was very odd.

I spoke a few words with Heodan, a merchant travelling to Gilded Vale with intentions of taking up the offer for new settlers; I don’t know quite what would drive him to leave wherever he is from, but I know enough of running that I did not ask.

He had a fairly good selection of weapons, for a man who has been living in a caravan for weeks. It was very odd for me not to be able to buy anything; a dearth of money is not exactly a problem we encountered on the Marianna.

We waited as long as possible for Sparfel to return with my water - lord, that makes me sound like some spoiled aristocrat, but I am assured that without water I could die very quickly, with this stomach sickness.

Sparfel was nowhere to be seen, and so I was forced to venture forth in search of my own water; it seems nothing to narrate, but my head seemed to be floating a few feet above my shoulders, the dark rolled at the corners of my eyes and I gasped when I walked. I recall when we took on a party of scurvy-ridden Aedyrans, fleeing the Navy; I swayed more than they did, sweating and shaking like a prisoner due to be hung.

We made our way over the river on a narrow, crumbling bridge, well made centuries ago. The rivers here are scarcely worth the name, the opposite of the trees; they skulk along their beds, mud-brown, and carve out gorges which they refuse to fill. This one, from the smell, had at least one corpse in it, but at least it was downstream.

There I go again. I complain about the smell of the stream and not the fact that Sparfel was slain and we were ambushed. In my defense, Sparfel was very unpleasant.

This did not substantially decrease my response to him stumbling out of the cover of the woods with an arrow planted in his spine. I wondered for a moment if it was a hallucination, but Calisca’s stream of impressively linguistically varied curses were convincing. Father-- my thanks for teaching me the relevant Nasitaaq, although I fear I missed the gist of the Valian; a cow was involved, I think.

Following Sparfel came a raider, a shadow in the dark of the woods. I lurched forwards on instinct and smashed half his chest in before he could get his sword up- Dyrwood humans are hardy but breakable, it seems- and it was lucky I moved when I did because another arrow spun past my ear, where my eye had been a moment before. A hard thrust with Rio, once I’d ducked past his flailing sabre, punched through the raider’s flimsy armour and left him bleeding out. Calisca rounded on the archer on the bridge; we were flanked, which suggested that though they went down easy, they were more prepared than I was tempted to give them credit for.

Calisca’s battleaxe beats a war bow at close range by quite a margin, and we slunk back to camp as quietly as possible. The murmur of the stream and the rising wind covered the noise of the raiders dying, air hissing through smashed ribs as blood seeped into the stream.

Further gore was beaten into Rio as we returned; we fell upon sentries in the dark, less concerned about stealth and more about avoiding the sort of unbalanced fight that I, in my sickly state, could not survive. Trees began to multiply, swimming in front of my eyes. Unfortunately, as we drew closer to the camp the noise became too much, and we strode into view of the raiders without any attempt at concealment.

It was a scene of total carnage; it was clear that they had made no attempt at keeping the place clean, and the viscera of my travelling companions was soaking into the dry earth. Flies had begun to descend, and the gasps of dying men were a hellish thing to hear. Raiders walked among them, grinding our company into the dirt with their heels, faces turned from the fire.

The leader of these men of Eir Glanfath stepped forwards, clearly in the mood for a bit of witty repartee before he tried to slaughter Calisca and I like he’d killed the rest of the caravan.

“We have not trespassed in the ruins,” I said, in the hopes that this was all a particularly bloody misunderstanding, but as I stepped closer in an attempt to negotiate he drew the limp body of Heodan from the ground and held a knife to his throat.

He spat something at me about blood being paid; my compatriots would say it already had.

What a silly man.

I drew myself up and took a tighter hold on Rio, digging blood and viscera out of the carvings. Even deathly ill, I am still larger and stronger than a human.

“Only a man without honour attacks a weak opponent where a stronger one exists,” I said, hoping to draw his attention away from Heodan as he choked.

This was supremely counterproductive, as not only did the party of raiders turn on us, he slashed at Heodan’s gut as he let him go, leaving him gasping on the ground.

I was able to hold off most of the raiders by swinging Rio in wide circles, levelling the fight a little, and we were able to pick them off individually in this manner. Heodan, fighting even from the floor, slayed several with dagger cuts to Achilles tendons and vital arteries. It was a slow fight, dragged out, more people killed from a constant wearing-down than sudden wounds. At one point, a particularly sneaky raider managed to duck past my guard and advance at me, sabre raised, but his advancing blow was so wide and hard that he forgot his shield-work, forgot to keep his distance, and I was able to take hold of his sword-hand, force it upwards, and land a thrust to the underside of his chin while he was attempting to find his feet..

Of course, the disaster did not did not end there. Ondra drown the land but it got worse.

Have I been cursed? Is there a curse on our line that you have neglected to mention?

The storm that had been hanging on the horizon all day had crept up without us noticing, and as I helped Heodan off the ground the wind began to shriek like a living thing. Trees thrashed like kraken, and the dark clouds seemed like the waves in a monsoon. I had been warned of the storms here; they call them bîaŵacs, and they say they are the work of Berath, reaping the souls that did not pass on.

I see, now, that there may be some truth in that. I had assumed it was a myth, based on the particularly violent Glanfathan weather, but in the dark there were strange lights, purple luminescence shining over the bodies of the dead. Perhaps these are the strange wonders I was promised in these foreign lands; myth made visible.

Nobody lives through a bîaŵac, I hear; the wind is indiscriminate. Indeed, Calisca begun to shine with that same violet light, like burning potassium. I could not see, but perhaps my own soul was wrenched loose, perhaps I shone the same. It ached regardless.

I hefted Heodan over my shoulders - he ruined my shirt with bloodstains - and we ran for the entrance to the ruins. The ground began to shake, falling away below my feet; dark reached out from the edges of my vision; screaming and singing battled in my ears.

We were almost safe, almost at the entrance to the ruins but at the last a raider we had thought was dead reared up and took hold of Heodan; I had no choice but to throw Rio after him, dislodging him just enough to continue on.

The ruins of Cilant Lîs are hollowed into the earth; the entrance was a graceful thing, arching stone, but fragile. Rock, set loose by the quaking of the earth, smashed the arches and we were sealed in. We are all lucky to be alive, lucky that the rest of the ruins did not collapse, lucky that Berath did not take us away on the wind, but this luck does not outweigh everything else.

I will not thank Berath for this strange mercy. Too much has been lost. The men and women I journeyed with lay slain, murdered indiscriminate.

I write this from our camp in the ruins. I did what I could for Heodan by calling down the healing of the Wayfinders, but he still had a gash in his guts, and though the movement of air through the ruins indicates there is an exit, it is likely to be too far in to venture without rest. Calisca argued fervently for continuing on, but I feel Heodan would not survive the night.

Skuldr and xaurips litter the tunnels, sickly from starving and easily beaten into the ground. It seems there were in fact looters in the ruins, but they bear all the marks of being native to the Dyrwood, and their bodies, dead when we found them, were not identifiable as members of our caravan. I was able to take from them this notebook - stained with blood and water as it is - a little money, and a shirt to replace the one Heodan’s blood ruined; my clothes, along with everything I didn’t carry with me and Rio, lay out in the forest, abandoned among rotting bodies.

Calisca worried there are more, further in, and that these dead ones are the ones they left behind. She fears we will be ambushed in the night. I must say I wish she hadn’t mentioned it. I am enough on edge.

I have taken the first watch; Heodan needs the sleep, and I could not sleep in this state, afraid of falling into fever-dreams. The faint light of the fire is enough to write. I hope I have the opportunity to send this.

I hope you and Father are well. I apologise again for losing Rio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> esoh: jammering about murdering people for profit as a child  
> calisca: a tad uncomfy w/ that kinda talk  
> esoh: What Did I Say???????
> 
> a while caravan + a party of raiders: slaughtered  
> esoh: sorry for dropping my greatstaff. also my shirt got ruined
> 
> esoh you halfwit get your priorities in order


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things get worse. things get better, marginally. things get worse again.

Folio II

‘Dust and Ashes; the Gallows-Tree’

 

_ Folio II, like Folio I, consists of unsent letters, the original copies of the Letters Across the Water.  They are written in heavily faded ink on folded loose paper, presumably that provided by the inn in Gilded Vale. _

 

_ These letters are undated, either because they were not intended to be a historical record or because Esoh did not know the date. _

_ It starts: _

 

Death. Death. Death. Everywhere, dust and ashes.

 

The misfortune continues. The sky could fall tonight and I would not be surprised.

 

Is there a curse? Have I offended some malicious god? I will not take back what I have said about Berath. For what she has wrought today, I will take my satisfaction. I am lucky to be alive; I am not grateful.

 

Mother: I hope you are well. I am not.

 

We woke in the ruins, having survived the night, certain that the worst was behind us. Of course, this misconception lasted only long enough for Heodan and I to discover that Calisca had left during her watch. Her fear was stronger than I had thought, and I could forgive her for this if not for the fact that she had taken the waterskins when she ran, condemning Heodan and I to die of thirst if we did not find a way out of the ruins with exceptional haste.

 

My condition had improved some overnight, and Heodan and I managed to scavenge enough meat from the bones of a Xaurip to stave off fainting of hunger; we could traced Calisca’s path by the disruption of the dust, and found that her betrayal had been for nothing, because we found her body in the hall, splayed and burnt on a sheet of glowing tiles. The path was suspended over chasms in the rock, and the runes shone with a deep red fire; a path where she had stepped was cold and dead, so we could reach her body, but it was clear she had been foolish and tried to continue onwards as the traps burned her up.

 

Foolish. Stupid. I wish she hadn’t been such. She was a lovely girl. Now, of course, she is mostly charred meat. Dust and ashes.

 

The waterskins we could scavenge from her body, but most of the contents had spilled and boiled away; a waste. A waste of many things.

 

In the chamber before the tiles, an arched door marked one wall, wide and carved with gold runes; I would have tried to open it, but the whole place stunk of crisped fat, sulfurous burnt hair, and the sick metallic smell of boiled blood. We dove back into the side-tunnels, probably the paths for servants or staff instead of the vaulted halls for use of richer visitors.

 

Typically, the security of these narrow corridors was neglected, and we were able to break through a crumbling wall and navigate around the death-trap tiled chamber. We found more bodies as we went, more looters killed by the resident spiders or the skuldr or perhaps, by the dagger-marks on one, by their irate compatriots. We took from them what we could, weapons that I barely knew how to use and ill-fitting armour I hoped would buy me a night when we escaped; and from one, a treasure. In the pockets of a dead looter I found an Engwithan gem the size of my hand, a pale clear blue, carved perfectly into the shape of a staring eye. No magic rests on it, I think, other than age and beauty. Father would adore it; I shall see about sending it home as soon as I can secure a good courier.

 

We emerged from the dark paths into a grand room, circular and shining with glowing adra ban, shedding a pale blue light into vaulted arches and the lines of shining copper embedded in whorls into the walls and floor. Great spiders, the size of large dogs, scuttered on the far side, attending to webs that bore more eggs, but beyond them was a doorway through which streamed an open sky. 

 

We skirted the edges of the room, moving silently and trying to avoid their eyes; we succeeded until we reached the door, at which point we were silhouetted against the sun and unmistakable.

 

It is very hard to fight a giant spider unarmed. While Heodan, armed with his daggers, was able to slash at the weak points in their exoskeletons, I was forced to resort to gouging out eyes, tearing off legs and smashing the beasts against the wall.

 

We emerged into the sunlight sticky with the beasts’ lymphatic fluid and covered in dust and webbing, but giddy with fresh air. Heodan laughed aloud and dropped to the grass to look up at the sky, and I was about the join him until I noticed that the clearing was not unoccupied. 

 

I kicked him to silence him, and we moved towards the wall. The space we had entered was an open ruin, Heodan and I perched on a skirting wall, grass growing up through rubble and the grey stone pillars of the Engwithans. Our vantage point was obscured enough that the people below did not see us.

 

A great machine, stone and copper and deep green adra, sprawled across the ruins like a living thing. Circles of carved stone covered a pillar of adra, stairs and steps and sheets of runes surrounding it. On a platform stood the strangest man I’ve ever seen.

 

His face was covered with shining metal, and at first I thought him for one of Abydon’s chosen; then I saw the protrusions of his headdress, dark horns on either side of his face like the wings of a leashed albatross, some sort of omen. He wore faded robes that none-the-less shone with golden runic embroidery, and as he stood to address the people clustered before him he seemed like some regal vision of an ancient god.

 

He spoke of things beyond my understanding, pled with the men to take their place and do their duty; what duty I do not know. “Let his life by the Key be his confession,” he said; “Let his death by the Key be his absolution; may he walk the world ever free of the crushing weight of the book.”

 

He seemed to be speaking of some man now dead, and addressed them again: “Will you fulfil the oath?”

 

I do not know what he meant. I do not know what any of it meant. I do know that he urged those men to their deaths.

 

They took places on the carved floor, as certain as if it had been rehearsed; the man in the mask operated some sort of mechanism, and the machine came alive.

 

The disks spun; the adra began to shine; the sky went dark. The men began to scream. Frozen in their positions, they began to glow with that same purple light, souls wrenched free like when the storm came. The light flowed towards the machine, the screaming rose in pitch, and I saw Heodan begin to shake beside me.

 

The machine stopped; there was a moment of absolute stillness. Silence fell like a shroud.

 

A wave of force slammed into me, pushed me backwards into the wall of the ruins, gashed my head open on a rock.

 

I slipped sideways out of the world.

 

Unconsciousness was not unconsciousness. I was aware that I was sleeping, somewhere that wasn’t where I was, but that was not what I experienced.

 

For one long moment, stretched into an interminable time, I was someone else. My thoughts, my mind were not my own. 

 

A great circular chamber again, ancient architecture but unbroken by the centuries, green and copper shining. A machine, disks of stone and runes like the one at Cilant Lis but larger, huge, stretching towards the sky on a pillar of adra seemingly without end. The man from before, the mask and robes, and I walked towards him with one question in my mind.

 

There was a desperate need to know, almost physical, in my heartbeat and my trembling fingers. I cannot remember what the question was.

 

I don’t know what this vision was. I don’t know who I was, if not myself, or where this place was. It lingers, though, now when I close my eyes.

 

I woke up on the earth, bleeding sluggishly from a wound to the head, and the world looked different. Whispers sound just out of my hearing, like the ringing pressure when you dive too deep. A song, without words or melody and sounding like a storm, plays over and over in my blood. I hummed and shook with paranoia, and I still do now.   
  


Heodan lay dead on the ground. Blood had spilled from his broken skull and lay on the earth in dark, stinking pools. 

 

It did not seem right to me, that he had died and I had not. There seems to be no justice in it. After all that we had lived through, for him to die of a head wound by chance seemed like the worst sort of joke.

 

I could not stay there, his sightless eyes looking up at the sky.

 

I walked away, and at some point I crossed a line in the world and the whispers covered everything. I seemed to see past the world as it is, saw everything lit with a potassium violet light, and in front of me was a figure made of nothing. He was a hole in the world, and I saw his edges by the way the light bent and broke; I heard him through my bones. He was stretched out on a rack, glittering with spectral blood and screaming.

 

I froze, was unable to move with the horror of it, and as soon as I gathered my wits enough to help him he was gone. Mist disappeared into the cracks in the stone.

 

Stairs, shallow and wide and scarred by the steps of thousands, marked the way to the ritual space. The bodies of the men who had powered the machine were still frozen in screams, but what had been flesh and blood was ashes. Their clothes, their bones, all was grey dust, and as the breeze stirred they began to crumble. Right now those nameless sacrifices drift over the Dyrwood on high winds.

 

The machine looked no more understandable up close; circuits of copper coiled in strange shapes, Engwithan endless knots curved across the disks, gargoyles and crude figures of dragons were leashed to the adra with metal chains. When I stepped close, the world shifted again. This time, it was a woman on a pyre, leashed to a cross and dying in the flames. I flinched and cowered from it, and once again it evaporated into mist.

 

I left. I couldn’t bear to stay.

 

I take back everything good I have ever said about Dyrwoodan forests. They are too large, too dark, too full of wolves and trolls and gods-damned  _ rain. _ It rained through the night, and the grey dawn was scarcely warmer than the dark. 

 

Figures moved in the early morning mist, insubstantial and fractured; by some mercy, none were as tortured as the ones I’d seen in the ruins of Cilant Lis, merely faceless wanderers.

 

By the time I reached Gilded Vale I had been awake for near enough an entire day, with a brief period of unconsciousness for punctuation. This strange malady would not let me stop long enough to make camp, chasing me with whispers every time I tried to rest; I twitched and shook, and passed the few strangers I saw without a word.

 

It rained. It rained some more.

 

At the gate to Gilded Vale I leant on a lamp-post and managed to pull myself together enough that I merely seemed harried, and not a man on the verge of breaking down at any given moment.

 

I managed to keep this illusion together for the entirety of my conversation with one of the most unpleasant men I’ve ever met.

 

The member of the local guard in charge of greeting the new settlers- which I assume is what he thought I was- was a slimy, abrasive man named Urgeat, who looked half-dead and seemed determined to make everyone he meets as unhappy as he is.

 

This was not a complicated task, because the first sight that greets a traveller to Gilded Vale is a  _ tree full of corpses. _

 

The tree grows out of the ruins in the centre of town, huge and branching and bare of leaves. Bodies hang on the ropes they died on, dozens of dead rotting in the pale sunlight. The sickly stench of rot is palpable.

 

I came to this unholy town in search of rest. I was confronted with the raven-pecked eye-sockets of hanged prisoners and goddamned  _ Urgeat. _

 

The wretch of a man accosted me as I searched for the inn, speaking on behalf of the local lord; before I could sleep I was apparently to be subject to prying questions about my history of offspring, of whom - of course - I have none. It appears that the region is suffering from a plague on infants; they say they are born without souls, but more likely it is some malady of the brain.

 

Of course, I have spent the last day seeing spirits, so I may be being too skeptical.

 

Urgeat also warned me that Gilded Vale prosecutes what he described as ‘dissidents, charlatans, and those who would hide a curse in our midst.’ I suspect a great many people would like to curse  _ him. _ Still, if he acts on the local Lord’s authority, the idea is worrying, especially if it’s those people who end up on the tree.

 

Urgeat, when pressed, hisses with vitriol about wars long passed and speaks with a sickening, enamoured lilt of ‘his lord.’ He speaks of appeasing Berath to end the plague, the stupid man. I could feel something humming under his skin, the feeling of the purple light without any visible presence, and it was viscous and oily and clung to me the longer I spoke to him.

 

As I was attempting to rid myself of the man, three tolls of a great bell rang out from the distant keep. Villagers, arrayed across the square as far from the tree as possible, broke into panicked murmurs as the last sounded.

 

Urgeat blinked at the keep like a lizard, and with the narrow-mouthed, cold-eyed grin of one informed me that the three bells meant that Raedric, his beloved lord, had lost a child. And then, with a mirthless sort of cruel expression, he told me I should ‘tread carefully.’

 

He is perhaps the most unpleasant man I have ever met. He gives off the impression of some basking slow worm that has lived under a rock since it first crawled out of the ocean, slimy and cold-blooded and entirely lacking in sympathy. 

 

Wishing to put as much distance between me and him and his sick dark oil-slick presence as possible, I set off towards the inn, letting petty hatred seep under my skin and wake me up a little.

 

Standing by the door, as if determined to complicate my evening in any way they could, was a knot of four or five people, waving arms and over-enunciating at a man in Aedyr clothing. As I approached, it became clear that this was a fight brewing, and also that the man in the silly sleeveless armour was in fact an elf clutching a grimoire at his side; it was probably a fairer playing field than any of the aggressors presumed.

 

“I meant no offence!” The unlucky elf said, in a voice that quavered a little more than it ought. “Let’s put this matter to rest over  round, shall we?”

 

This is, of course, the correct and proper way to respond to an accidental slight. Apologising with alcohol is how these little mishaps are smoothed over, at least by reasonable men. It seems these were not reasonable men, or at least were inebriated enough to throw of the yoke of propriety, because they spat something crude in response.

 

This, of course, put the hooded elf firmly on the right side, a fact which, in my hate-giddy restless state, I welcomed as a completely sensible reason to start a brawl. I loomed behind one of the agitators and took great pleasure in announcing my presence in such a way as to make him startle.

 

“You’ve got a lot of gall, mocking us in our own village,” a particularly bloodshot man said, as though his being born in the village made him any less beholden to the laws of etiquette.

 

It seems that what the Aedyran had done to provoke them was suggest that one of them go fuck their sister, in what I recognised as pitch-perfect Hylspeak; this is, of course, a skill to be applauded, and not taken offence at. 

 

I said as such, and was informed by an elven woman that she didn’t take orders, which seemed like a very odd concept, considering they’re all living under the heel of what appears to be a tyrannical madman.

 

It was great fun knocking them out.

 

In hindsight, it seems obvious that  _ something _ was causing Mr Aloth Corfiser - for that, it seems, is his name - to behave contrary to his nature, which from what I have seen tonight tends more towards de-escalation and diplomacy than insulting strangers, at least to their faces. The Hylspeak also is strange, for an Aedyran.

 

Regardless of this particular character flaw, Corfiser is a perfectly nice man. He seems to have mastered sardonics, and when I offhandedly mentioned the machine in the ruins - made talkative by lack of sleep, I presume - he made the most amusing face I have ever seen. He shares my poor opinion of the inn’s ale, beds, food and clientele; supper with him was an exercise in mockery. It helps, of course, that he is not unattractive, in a distinctively pointy Elven way.

 

He and I have agreed to travel together for a time. He says he is a settler; this is so blatant and obvious a lie I told him so. It is of no consequence; a man is allowed his secrets. Assuming he is not taken by Berath within the week, which at this point I almost expect, getting to know him more shall be enjoyable. This malady, strange as it is, seems to like him; where Urgeat was an oil slick, he wavers and glimmers like sunlight on the sea. I cannot explain it; it is an impression that one feels with simultanteously the whole body and no mortal sense.

 

He sleeps across the room from me as I write this; even now, drooping with tiredness, the whispers and flickers that follow me will not let me sleep. Aloth, I think, has noticed that something is wrong, but was polite enough not to mention it.

 

There is nothing that can be done, I suppose, other than put this letter away until the morning and lie in bed and hope. We will head onwards to Caed Nua soon.

 

Goodnight, mother. I hope the crew fare well and trading has been profitable. I hope you have not been beset by my misfortune.

 

Your affectionate son,

 

Esoh Dya Marianna.

  
  


_ Editor’s Account: _

 

_ At around three in the morning that night I was woken from a light sleep by Esoh, in a twin bed across the room, making a noise like he’d been struck. He had been sleeping fitfully all night, and I was not surprised to find him plagued by nightmares; he had seemed to be haunted by something, the few hours we had spent together, at once self-assured to the point of arrogance and paranoid. _

 

_ When he had finished twitching and slowed his breathing from ‘hare flying from a fox’ to something more sensible, he levered himself upright and sat on the edge of his narrow bed, head in hands. I blinked my way into full conciousness, and asked him what had happened. _

 

_ Sweating and breaking off, stopping and starting, he told me of a dream. He talked of the gallows-tree outside the window; of the noise of ropes in the wind amplified to a deafening chorus; he spoke of the corpse of a dwarf woman, one hanged for animancy, and how she looked at him with empty eyesockets and breathed rotten air and named him Watcher. _

 

_ I took him to the window, and he pointed out the exact body who had spoken; she hung close to the ground, half her head caved in with rot. Grisly as it was, the sight of her unmoving seemed to reassure him, and though he stared at the ceiling for an interminable time, eventually he went back to sleep. _

 

_ He left the room well before I woke up, and sometime between then and my leaving in search of him wrote the following, which I had no knowledge of until assembling his biography after his death. _

 

My father--

 

What have we done?

 

I find myself frozen, plagued with horror at myself. Yesterday has brought self-knowledge that I never desired to know.

 

I wrote to Mother with such hatred of the Glanfathans that attacked my caravan, spoke of how they slaughtered indiscriminate people who had never wronged them, of the carnage that they brought. I was immediately aware that this was wrong to do, found myself aghast at the lack of compassion necessary-- but only when it was done to me.

 

How many times has the Marianna boarded Valian ships in the dark and killed every crewman who would stand against us? How many bodies have we left to Ondra for the crime of carrying cargo through our waters? Is greed and habit more defensible than mistake?

 

Why was it right when I did it? Why could I not comprehend the nature of my actions?

 

My father-- I have always known you to be a good man, guided by right and honest principles. 

 

And yet. And yet.

 

If it was in truth a crime against something more permanent than the law, how could you be complicit?

 

Forget this. Forget this. I will not condemn my family. This is some madness, as much as visions of the dead. It will pass, as this sickness will pass, and I will be able to live with myself again.

 

_ This letter is not signed, and was never sent. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, inventing esoh: large pirate paladin boy he's sweet and cheerful!  
> me, now: Suffer.


End file.
